Monthly Archives: June 2006

Post navigation

On the flight up I got a chance to check out the Mac’s DVD playback capabilities. In a nutshell, they rock! I watched The Hidden Fortress, one of the Kurosawa boxed set 4 Samurai Classics. It’s pretty clear that George Lucas borrowed pretty heavily from the story line when he created Star Wars. The movie is a classic. It doesn’t have the high production values of American movies also shot in 1958, there are some rough edits and shaky cameras, but the story line is great and the actors really bring it to life.

The story follows two peasants, Tahei and Matashichi and their search for some gold. Along the way they run in to Rokurota Makabe, played by Toshiro Mifune, who is protecting Princess Yuki the last noble of the Akizuki clan. The group travels through enemy territory tring to get the princess and her gold to safety, hunted by enemies and the pesants greed.

If you like classic cinema, samurai movies, or Star Wars, check it out because it’s an important part of all of them.

The painkillers and muscle relaxers have helped, but I’m still hurting so I decided to try one of the other recommendations the doctor had and went up to The Massage Company to have my back worked on.

This was my first real massage and I went in not knowing what to expect, but Alex set me at ease and really worked my back over. Some of it was approaching too intense, but at the end I don’t have sharp pains when I inhale. My back feels a lot better and I think I’m going to be returning at least monthly to keep my back healthy.

I’m a little fed up with how badly my electric razor has been chewing up my face that I’ve been looking to go back to blades. I’ve been going to a barber shop to get my hair cut for a while now and have had a couple straight razor shaves which, unlike disposables, doesn’t leave me with a raw face and ingrown hairs, so I went over to Classic Shaving and ordered a starter shaving set. It should be in next week so hopefully it’ll work out better than my electric razor has.

Well, it didn’t work. There was too much of a speed mismatch and I’ve been seeing a lot of instability including an all out lockup. So back to Fry’s for another pair of the TwinX 1024-3200C2 modules. Now everything’s the same speed, though I did have to manually set the DRAM timings in the BIOS. But Corsair’s got a good forum whith excellent advice, so if you’ve got their memory and need some help, head over to www.asktheramguy.com for help.

It was problems on GoDaddy’s side. I did the web based registration again this morning and it went right through the first time. I’ve now got a 256 bit SSL cert on the pat-st-jean.com domain. Now I just need to get some content that needs the SSL!

GoDaddy‘s selling chained SSL certificates for less than $20 per year. I’ve been meaning to add one to the www.pat-st-jean.com side of things because I’m going to be doing some more programming and want a secure place to do on-line registration and more. I ordered a 2 year certificate for a total of $36. I’m having a little trouble getting the site to accept the CSR, but it looks like they’re having problems so I’ll try again tomorrow.

I had a rotten night and got to the doctor this morning. I’ve been having sharp pains when I inhale and was getting a little worried about what’s going on. The doctor said that some muscle spasms in my back have pulled a rib out of line. He have me some pain killers and muscle relaxers to see if they’ll help. At least I can breathe without pain now, but I don’t like how fuzzy headed they make me.

I’ve been having some trouble with mod_security eating up all the available RAM on the machine so I decided to add another gig of RAM. Fry’s had a matched pair of Corsair 512M modules so that I can keep my DDR2 speeds up. They’re installed now, but there’s some funkyness with getting them running with the existing RAM. They’re newer and faster than the existing modules. I’m going to watch them for a while and see if everything plays nice.

I picked up Proven Guilty, Jim Butcher‘s latest book in the Dresden Files series for the flights to and from MITM and finished it tonight. It’s definitely in keeping with the rest of the series, only novel length, and has started to tie up a few of the loose ends that Jim has been putting in throughout the series. There are multiple plot lines which intersect throughout the book. No spoilers but the ending has left me with more questions and waiting for the next book. Harry’s taken on new responsibilities, some of which might get him killed and others which want him the next best thing to dead, so hurry up and write the next one, Jim!